It is widely acknowledged that W. H. Auden became a Christian in about 1940, but relatively little critical attention has been paid to Auden’s theology, much less to the particular theological sources of Auden’s faith. ...

In Henrik Ibsen's and Caryl Churchill's plays, food is both fact and symbol, a reminder of both the shared physicality of the actors and spectators and of an equally powerful human desire for symbolic significance. This ...

Bernard MacLaverty's often critically ignored early works embody and consider anti‐violence rhetoric not limited to the concurrent Troubles of his native province, as well as model a process of coming to terms with a ...

This study argues that W.B. Yeats is an important poetic precursor for Eavan Boland, and particularly for her sophisticated engagement with the age-old subgenre of ekphrasis, in which a poem responds to a work of visual ...

This study illuminates the influence of two vastly different short story writers on the work of Frank O’Connor: James Joyce and Anton Chekhov. O’Connor vowed never to imitate the Russian master, and yet Chekhov’s theme ...

Somewhat unexpectedly, saints' lives provided rich material for literary writing in the first half of the 20th century or modernist period. This study examines commonalities in how George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, T. S. ...

This thesis considers the limits of myth, nature, and place in J.M. Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows and Brian Friel's Faith Healer. In Deirdre of the Sorrows, I argue that Synge remythologizes the Irish Deirdre myth in such ...

While Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando (1928) is often considered a light, autobiographical fantasy, it in fact is the summation and execution of Woolf’s theories of fiction as expressed in her critical and non-fiction essays. ...

In poems spanning his career, William Butler Yeats wrestled with the problem of human labor, which he saw as a source of suffering and despair. Though some poems depict the satisfaction of ideal labor, many others portray ...

In this thesis, I analyze five short stories representative of George Mackay Brown’s engagement with the problem of suffering and the persistence of grace in the world. Tensions that arise include the prolific and the ...

In the following thesis, I will examine Virginia Woolf's often contentious views concerning the theory and execution of biography. By focusing on the epistemology adumbrated in her essays and fiction, I will argue that the ...

In the tumultuous years following the Easter Rising of 1916, the Irish author W.B. Yeats consistently turned to drama as a primary medium through which he could reflect on the state of contemporary Irish culture. This ...

This thesis argues that there exists a fundamental relationship between space and identity construction and that this correlation becomes more apparent during periods of conflict. Because space plays a key role in identity ...

The application of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the dialogic provides unique insight into the poetry and plays of W.B. Yeats. Though this early twentieth century Irish writer favored poetry over the novel form on which ...

Many critics, like Oona Frawley, believe the land of Ireland has the unique power to connect the collective Irish conscience to the past and is often a rallying cry to garner support for the freedom of Ireland. MacLaverty ...

The following chapter will engage Waterland in isolation from Swift’s other novels and collection of short stories, not because these texts do not mutually illuminate one another, but because Waterland deserves a treatment ...

This study examines the role of ritual in enabling regional communities in twentieth-century British and Irish literature to articulate and sustain communal identity. Literary studies on the topic of ritual and community ...